


i saw a ghost (i think it was me)

by EllEli



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1337227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllEli/pseuds/EllEli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison wakes up cold, with a crick in her neck, on hard dirt.</p>
<p>Her first thought is to wonder why she was sleeping on the ground, and not in her warm bed.</p>
<p>Her second thought is that she’s dead, so why is she waking up at all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	i saw a ghost (i think it was me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CharacterDevelopment](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharacterDevelopment/gifts), [pr1nc3ssp34ch (dallisons)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dallisons/gifts).



>   
> _Fall, fall out of trees_  
>  Into the street  
>  On my own 
> 
> _I finally found out how long I can hang on_  
>  I've got this all wrong  
>  My heart is scared, my heart is gone 
> 
> _Now, looking around, there's no one here to hear my fall_  
>  White, white as a sheet  
>  I saw a ghost, I think it was me  
>  I've got to get out  
>  Out of this town  
>  It's scary  
>  Sometimes when I sleep  
>  I miss my home, I miss my tree  
>  And now it's up to them to carry me back up to the top 
> 
> _I've got this now_  
>  My legs are steady now  
>  The angels warned me never to fall down 
> 
> **\- Barcelona, Falling Out of Trees**  
> 

Allison Argent is dying in Scott McCall’s arms, and she isn’t ready.

She was promised so much more than this.

She overcame Kate and her mother, both their lives and deaths, clawed her way up past confusion, and anger, and depression.

She overcame werewolves that were always begging to sink into her with claws or their dicks, learned how to love and hate the full moon, how to sharpen weapons more deadly than their teeth and make them howl (one way or another.)

She overcame her fucking _bloodstream_ , reached into her ribcage to yank out the parts of her that weighed her down, navigated the strings of her DNA to remove the cells that wanted her body to become more weapon than human being.

She had overcome it all. She had been ready to lead.

Allison Argent is dying in Scott McCall’s arms, and she isn’t ready, and it isn’t _fair._

But life isn’t fair, or at least, that’s what she’s managed to piece together after a year of watching everything she’s ever loved turn to ashes around her. Life isn’t fair, and even when life continues being unfair, it goes on, at least for those left standing, those left holding your bloody body.

Scott McCall is going to stay strong, because there is no other choice. He’s going to save the world someday. Maybe he already has. Maybe he saved the world the first time he smiled. She’d believe it.

She doesn’t know what to tell him, and she can feel the blood inching towards her throat, sliding against her lungs. What does someone say? How do you comfort someone when you’re the one dying?

Allison thinks of Kate’s slashed throat. Thinks of her mother covered by a sheet in the hospital. Thinks of what she needed to hear, needed to hear one last time.

She’s telling him she loves him before she even knows what she’s saying, and she knows it isn’t enough, but maybe there isn’t an ‘enough’ when you’re seventeen and you’re dying in the arms of the boy who’s the closest thing you’ve ever felt to home.

Allison Argent dies in Scott McCall’s arms, and she isn’t ready, but she dies, anyway.

**********

Allison wakes up cold, with a crick in her neck, on hard dirt.

Her first thought is to wonder why she was sleeping on the ground, and not in her warm bed.

Her second thought is that she’s dead, so why is she waking up at all?

“Good morning, sunshine!”

Holy shit.

Allison’s head jerks up at the familiar voice, eyes widening at the sight before her. Erica’s standing only a few feet away, bent down at the waist, hands perched against her thighs. Blonde curls frame her face and she grins, a lopsided, happy kind of grin, at her.

“I was beginning to think you were never going to wake up.”

“You’re dead.”

It seems a bit inane to state, because of course Erica is dead.

Erica rolls her eyes at her, and holds out a hand to help her up.

She accepts it, after staring at it for a long moment, like she was afraid it might bite her. It doesn’t, Erica’s firm grip pulling her to her feet. She stumbles, dizzy at the sudden elevation, but catches herself a moment later and shakes it off.

“Are we ghosts?”

It’s the most logical conclusion. She’s dead. Erica is dead.

And upon further inspection, they’re in a graveyard. She turns to see a new, white headstone, next to her mother’s and her aunt’s. _Allison Argent. 1994-2011. Beloved daughter and friend. Allé mais jamais oublié._

It makes her feel ill, like she needs to throw up, but she doesn’t even know if she can do that anymore. She looks away from it quickly.

“Something like that. It’s a bit tricky to explain.”

“I’ll try to keep up.”

Erica nods, and makes a humming noise, turning to walk away from her, towards the cemetery parking lot. Allison follows, because she doesn’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter. And also, she’s not sure she wants to spend any more time here than she has to.

No one should ever have to look at their own grave.

“We heard Cora talking about this once, with Stiles. Sort of. We kind of drew our own conclusions from there.”

“We?”

“Boyd and I.”

The fact that Boyd is… around, too, doesn’t surprise her. She’s walking and talking and breathing, there is a heart beating in her chest. She woke up on top of her own grave. Nothing will surprise her again.

Erica presses on. “A pack isn’t like a family. It’s like… one person. Divided into a lot of parts. The pack is a single entity. And just as they feel our loss like they lost part of themselves… we can’t pass on until the rest of them do.”

Allison’s eyebrows draw together. They’ve reached the edge of the cemetery, her boots hitting the sidewalk. Her body moves on autopilot, following Erica, not thinking about where they might be headed.

“The Hale pack-”

“Were all here at one point. They passed on a little while ago. We think it’s because of Scott. Because of Derek joining Scott. Cora with her pack in South America. Peter betraying them. They didn’t have anything left to keep them here.”

She nods, absently, her mind still trying to process.

A pack thing. Extending even to human members of the pack, but only a pack thing.

Allison thinks of her aunt’s slashed throat and a sheet covering her mother in a hospital and swallows past a lump in her throat.

Maybe she wasn’t ready to see them again, anyway. Maybe she wouldn’t have known what to say.

Erica doesn’t push her to continue the conversation, but does glance back every few minutes to make sure she’s still there. Allison isn’t going anywhere.

**********

They’re almost at their destination when Allison realizes where they’re going, and she wants to tell Erica to stop, that she doesn’t want to do this, but she can’t seem to say the words. The apartment building where her father lives looms over them, looking bigger and scarier than it ever did when she was alive.

When she was alive. She shudders.

They catch a ride on the elevator with a man with a briefcase and a fedora, and Erica actually snickers a little. When the button lights up for her floor, and it isn’t the one he’s going to, Allison almost panics.

Until Erica grabs her hand and jumps.

It isn’t pleasant. It feels like some kind of violation, like something being slid into her body without her consent, and it makes her think of a sharp pain in her gut and blood in her lungs. But it’s over quickly, and she and Erica are on the other side of the elevator, in the hallway.

“You good?”

She doesn’t speak, just nods, and keeps walking. She knows where she’s going.

Walking through the door isn’t any more pleasant the second time, but she at least knows what to expect now.

Her dead, beating heart stutters into a strange rhythm when she steps into the living room.

Her father is sitting on the couch, arms at his sides, staring down at the carpet. His eyes are bloodshot red, his lids so swollen they look black and blue. He doesn’t look at her. She realizes he can’t see her, and even though she was expecting that, it makes a fresh pang of guilt rip through her chest.

Derek is sitting next to him. Silent and stoic, shoulders hard, breath even. Every few seconds, he glances across the couch, looks at him like he’s trying to decide if he’s still alive.

After five minutes of watching them, Allison realizes that Erica is no longer with her at the same moment that Derek asks her father if he needs another glass of water. He nods and Derek stands, walks into their kitchen. Navigates like he knows the place, like this isn’t his first night getting Chris Argent water and watching him breathe.

She wants to scream. She wants to hug her father and tell him she’s sorry for everything she’s ever done to him and tell him she loves him more than anyone in the world and tell him that he did so good, so good, even when he didn’t. She wants to tell Derek thank you thank you thank you thank you so fucking much, wants to hug him and tell him that she forgave him a long time ago and she wishes she’d been around long enough to earn forgiveness from him, and.

And she wants to scream, so she does, screams so loud and so long that her throat feels bloody and sore, but nothing happens. When she’s done screaming, she’s done screaming. Derek Hale is handing her father water, and they are sitting in silence, and she is still a ghost.

“Allison?”

She jumps, turns her head to the side to see Erica peering at her from down the hall.

“Come on. Boyd is waiting with the others.”

Her body moves faster than her mind does, trailing after Erica. Her bedroom door is open. She sees Boyd leaning against the doorframe, and he gives her room to pass him by. She mutters something, maybe a ‘thank you’ or a ‘hey’ or a ‘you look great’ but whatever it is is lost on her, because her mouth is working on its own.

They’re all there.

Stiles is lying down, taking up her entire bed, but he looks like he might die any second, so she thinks, yeah, lying down is probably good for him. His skin is pale, almost blue, eyes red and he’s shaking in small tremors. He’s staring at her ceiling, breathing labored.

His fingers are tracing the pattern in her comforter perfectly, even though he’s not looking at it, and she wonders how long he’s been doing that, that he doesn’t have to look to follow the lines perfectly.

Isaac is sitting on the floor, knees to his chest, head on his knees, arms wrapped around himself. Trying to make himself small. Trying to make himself miniscule. She’s seen him do this before. Wrap in on his own body, try to take up as little space as possible.

She can hear him crying.

She wants to comfort him, but she can’t, because she’s dead, so instead she looks away.

Scott is standing in the center of her room, the box of weapons from her closet in his hands, and open, on her desk. He’s going through it, occasionally picking something up and studying it, before putting it back down.

It would be practical, going through her weapons. It would appear, for all intents and purposes, he was fine. Practical and fine.

She notices that his eyes flash a brilliant red every few seconds, and his hands haven’t stopped shaking once.

Allison looks away again, when Lydia speaks.

“Do you think Mr. Argent would mind if I took some of her clothes?”

Lydia’s standing in front of open closet doors, hair pinned up to the back of her head, dressed in a black dress that’s too tight, a pair of heels that are too tall, and staring at Allison’s wardrobe like a hungry animal. “Never mind. I don’t care if he cares.”

Someone in the room scoffs, and Allison thinks it might have been Isaac, but Lydia doesn’t seem phased. She starts grabbing everything her hands touch, folding clothes over her arms until it’s overflowing, and Allison sees the mania in her eyes a few seconds before absolutely everything tumbles out of her grip and Lydia goes falling on her ass.

Scott goes to help her up and Lydia screams at him, “Don’t touch me!” and Scott jerks backwards like he’s on fire.

Everything in the room feels very, very still.

A moment later, Lydia composes herself, stands up on her ridiculous heels, and picks up the clothes, folding them into piles on the bed. Scott goes back to the box. Isaac and Stiles barely register the entire thing, save for Stiles shuffling his leg out of the way to make room for the clothes.

Allison feels like she can’t breathe, which is stupid, because she’s dead, she’s fucking dead, why the fuck should she even need to breathe.

“I’m right here.” She says the words slowly, loudly, staring at her best friend, trying to get her to fucking see. “I’m standing right here, Lydia. You’re a _banshee._ You’re tapped into this death stuff. Right? RIGHT? Why can’t you fucking see me! Why won’t you look at me!”

Allison reaches for the first thing she can, a picture of Kate on her dresser, and she wants to throw it at someone’s fucking head, but her fingers pass right through it. Which just makes her mad. She reaches for it again. And again. And again.

Each time the anger builds, each time nothing happens.

Until something does.

The side of her hand cracks into the picture frame and knocks it forward onto the dresser.

Allison gasps, just as Boyd grabs her arms and drags her back to his chest.

“I did that.”

“Allison, enough.”

They’re all staring now. All four of her friends, staring at the picture on the dresser. Stiles and Scott share a look. Lydia takes a step forward, towards the dresser, towards Allison.

After another second passes, Lydia clears her throat, and goes back to what she was doing. The rest of them look away. The moment is over.

Allison squirms against Boyd’s hold until he releases her, wheeling around to shove her palms against his chest.

“I can move things! I can let them know I’m here!”

At Boyd’s side, Erica sighs, a soft kind of noise that makes Allison want to wring her neck. “Yes. We can move things, with enough concentration and effort. But we can’t tell them you’re here, Allison.”

“Why? Why not? WHY CAN’T I TALK TO THEM? WHY CAN’T I SAY GOODBYE?” She knows her voice has reached hysterics, that she’s losing it, losing some thread on herself, but she doesn’t even care. Can’t make herself care, because she’s dead, but it still isn’t over, and nothing is okay, and nothing is ever going to be okay again.

Boyd grips her shoulders and turns her around. When he speaks, it is close to her ear, a low tone that hits her somewhere in her spine.

“Because if they thought for one second that there was a way to bring you back, Allison, if they thought you were out there and there was any chance at all of having you, do you think that any of them could think about anything else? Do you think that they could focus on saving lives, on keeping themselves safe? Or do you think that they would spend every waking second trying to find a way to bring you back to them?”

Allison stares at Scott’s eyes flashing red. Lydia’s lower lip quivering. Stiles’ hand tracing her bedspread. Isaac’s body curled into itself.

“We can help them. Push little things in their path. Let them see things they wouldn’t have seen without us. That’s it.”

She wants to keep fighting them. Wants to disagree. Tell them that they’re wrong.

At her side, Erica mumbles, “At least you got a funeral. There was some closure.”

It occurs to Allison that she has no idea if Erica or Boyd ever had a funeral. And then it occurs to her that the thought never even occurred to her before now.

When she collapses into Boyd’s chest, sobbing apologies and incoherencies, he holds her. He holds her and he doesn’t let go.

**********

It’s nine hours later that Allison, Erica, and Boyd are lying on the floor of Derek’s loft, everyone else in their town fast asleep, that Allison rolls over to them and says, “Teach me.”

They exchange a look with each other, before they nod.

By the time the sun comes up, Allison has arranged the books on Derek’s desk in alphabetical order.

**********

**One Year Later.**

The rain is pouring down hard on the Beacon Hills Preserve, but it doesn’t seem to know she’s there anymore than the rest of the world does. She’s perfectly dry, running through the rain like she runs through anything else.

“Allison - Kira!” She hears Erica yell the words from across the clearing, and looks up to see one of the poison darts aimed straight at Kira’s face.

She screams, lunges forward, bats it away. Kira doesn’t even notice, still running, trying to get away from the imps that have been chasing the pack for the past two miles.

“That’s my girl!” Boyd calls from above them, before dropping down from one of the trees, winking at her. She grins back, before she lets herself fall back behind the pack.

Long enough to grab one of the imps by the neck, fingers wrapping around its skin. It tries to fight her off, but it can’t, doesn’t know what it’s fighting, can’t feel anything but the pressure on it’s windpipe and the life leaving it’s body.

In its ear, she snarls, “Stay away from my pack,” just before reaching up with her other hand and snapping its neck, leaving it lifeless on the forest floor.

No one will ever notice. People die in battles all the time. Allison knows this well by now.

She starts running again, and manages to catch up with them just in time to watch Erica bump Lydia out of the way of a poison dart headed for her stomach. The arrows goes through Erica’s stomach, instead, and when she looks up, she catches eyes with Allison, and the two girls grin at each other, too much teeth.

Through the rain, the pack eventually manages to outrun the imps, bodies dropping from exhaustion into the safety zone of the old Hale house property. Scott throws back his head and howls, from triumph, from the feeling of _life_ still pumping through his blood. The others join him, laughing dazedly, adrenaline making them all float.

Unseen and unheard, Erica Reyes, Vernon Boyd, and Allison Argent throw back their necks and howl with them.

**********

Allison Argent dies in Scott McCall’s arms, but it is not her ending.

It is her rebirth.


End file.
